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Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

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Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To reduce energy costs… you’ll need about double the current energy production we have today. I'm worried that if we were to double energy production, all of the new surplus would be soaked up by data centers.

The entire point of producing more energy is to consume it. A surplus of electricity on the grid is actually a bad thing that needs to be dealt with.

>The entire point of producing more energy is to consume it.

If the point of producing more energy is to produce more products, and instead it gets gobbled up by idiots giving us the next crappy phone app that runs in the cloud, then it's not me that's missing the point si it?

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#342
post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

Every healthcare post: 'this isn't the biggest cost in healthcare' 'this isn't going to fix things' Every jobs post: "this doesn't fix X" 'this isn't the biggest issue'. And the republicans keep dog walking straight to their goals while we talk about the best arrangement for deck chairs.

Because nobody actually wants to talk about the core of the problem or how to address it. They see different, seemingly unrelated problems depending on what their priorities are. The democrats are also not on the side of actually solving the problem.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving to the government/taxes paying for it doesn't fix that. It kinda does, bigger players have more bargaining power. There is no bigger player than the government in a universal healthcare system. Furthermore, a significant cost in healthcare is all of the bureaucracy around billing. Much of that goes away with single payer.

It would be very tough to reduce pay for doctors and other staff. The United States medical industry is one of the highest paying in the world.

This is true, but frontline healthcare staff wages are only one part of the problem. For specifics you can see details here (e.g.: US average front-line healthcare worker salary: €74.450, Germany: €40.522):

https://www.qunomedical.com/en/research/healthcare-salary-in...

But even absent any movement there you have a lot of savings to be had away from that: 1. The U.S. medical administration costs have ballooned, in large part because of the highly adversarial billing system between insurers and practitioners. Medicare/Medicaid is much less (but not completely) unpredictable. Doctors complain bitterly about the prices at times, but the system is much more efficient. 2. U.S. insurance companies are woefully inefficient. To the point that companies complained bitterly when the ACA required them to pay out 80% of premiums as medical payments. Before that there were companies making more than 20% profits. The most efficient insurance companies today use about 12% of their revenues for non-medical care. In comparison Medicaid uses about 3.9%.

There are lots of other parts you could address as well: 1. Fraud drawn to the huge payouts for medical bills. If people's accidents were just covered as a normal part of life those payouts, and most of that fraud just goes away. 2. Malpractice insurance. This is like the first, but would mostly be solved by a combination of single payer and a working medical review system (seriously, what we have now is the definition of regulatory capture).

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#344
Every country, or coalition of countries, need to have public manufacturing run by their respective governments where their main purpose is to raise the bar on product quality, r&d, and employee care.

Let the private sector battle it out in their race to the bottom on everything, but ensure there is an ethical and trustworthy alternative to create the necessary competition in the marketplace to secure progress, both technological and social, over stagnation and eventual necrosis.

This is part of that "national security" we hear so many go on about when defending their policies of hate.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#345

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

One of my main arguments for a universal health care scheme in the united states is how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is. Lets totally ignore efficacy, moral arguments, expense for the patient, etc. If you are a company in the US a large percentage of the effective compensation of employees is healthcare. A moderately good PPO is like ~$10k+ a year per employee. You can pay workers in some other…

It's a price to, in a way, handcuff workers. Systemically combined with policies that make sure unemployment doesn't get too low, weaken labor power, tie other benefits to employment, etc. Workers know they need your job to have affordable healthcare, so they have no choice but to stick with it even if it is somewhat crappy.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#346
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs also generally suck. I've worked a wide array of blue collar jobs and manufacturing I always found some of the worst, even worse than stuff like general labor building houses or working on fishing trawlers in the Bering sea because at least that stuff wasn't nearly as rote. You stand at a machine doing the same fucking thing over and over. Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up -- you think that sou…

Doing rote work is better than no work and living off the government. People in those rote jobs enjoy the camaraderie, the beers after work and putting their kids through school. Something an unemployed person has more difficulty doing. Even the great USSR had huge amounts of rote work. People found a way to live life.

Sure, let's adopt the Soviet model of "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay" because what could go wrong there!

You're basically asking every consumer to pay more for goods so someone can feel better about themselves personally (at the cost of someone who they don't share a country with). I'm not sure if you've met many people, but it's not a very compelling argument, nor a morally superior one due to the global impact.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#347
post #323
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main cost driver in medical care is provider (nurse, doctor, etc.) wages, not bureaucracy or drug prices (though they're frequently cited). I have tired of posting sources for the statistics, but they are very easy to find.

So, let's look at UnitedHealth Group; do they deliver health care? If there were single payer, what would their role be in the healthcare delivery process? Apparently they made 2.3 billion in profits on 113 billion in revenue in Q3 of 2025. How much of that friction would evaporate if they weren't in the healthcare delivery infrastructure. Someone once said "the best part is no part" ?

Compare UPS or FedEx to USPS; the first two companies are profit-seeking, yet very competitive with the 'public-oriented' (and legally privileged) USPS. Having the government in control does not necessarily lead to better value.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#348
post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

Manufacturing jobs bring the entire supply chain of the manufacturer with them. The area where I live, Greenville, SC used to be the textile capital of the world and then became essentially destitute when the entire industry offshored. BMW and Michelin locating their US HQ here essentially rebuilt this entire corner of the state with jobs and associated supply chains. Now, Greenville is booming with a more diverse ec…

We should still differentiate between low value and high value add manufacturing though. Building automobiles and automobile parts, great. Relatively high skill, high value add jobs. Spinning cotton, not so much.

If we have an infinite supply of labor with no better place to allocate them then sure, any additional job is good. But that's not the case. We have a constrained labor supply, so is it better overall to focus on high value, high pay jobs, even in manufacturing instead of aiming for the entire supply chain for everything?

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#349
post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

Market forces are what cause different jobs to pay different amounts. Welders don't get paid high wages out of charity or respect, they get it because welders with sufficient skills are rare, so if you don't pay up you won't get your welding done.

If service jobs can be differentiated (e.g. by training and licensing) then scarcity can be created.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Jensen specifically, and I can't remember the guy at the moment, but there have been a few tipped hands including one where the guy on national TV said something about "Americans should be gluing the iPhones together in the factory, not Chinese" and it really made a lot of this stuff click for me: they want to provide low-paying American jobs in American factories. That's probably not the whole vis…

You have one of 3 choices here: 1. Low paid American workers glue iphones together in sweatshops 2. Low paid Chinese workers glue iphones together in sweatshops 3. Well paid American workers glue iphones together in sweatshops, and to make this possible we have a massive tariffs regime that makes consumer goods massively more expensive and massively increases the price of all manufactured goods. Pick your poison. The…

If the US minimum wage is what we have agreed is the minimum amount someone should be paid to have a reasonable quality of life (and it can be argued that it is still too low), then number 3 is the only ethical choice.
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